Lobie (pronounced Low-Bee)

Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.

Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.

Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.

Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.

And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or  Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or  Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.

Nah.

OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.

I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:

i think back on this & realize that as third graders we were talking about how awful slavery was & because we were simply innocent kids without any societal or institutional influence yet, all of us could kept saying “why would you treat a HUMAN like that ?!” this one girl for her birthday invited all of us for her party & she got the Addy doll - every single one of us (boys included) held her & was in awe of this doll - it was such a touching experience.

i went back home about a year ago & ran into my third grade teacher in the grocery store. she said that year opened up a whole new teaching structure for her. she now reads american girl stories to her students starting day one of class every day to calm them down after recess & she’ll get through maybe four or five sets of books a year. she has the dolls in the room with packets on information from the doll’s time period that her students can “check out” to take home for weekends to care for them.

we oftentimes overlook how powerful toys can be in influencing young children & american girl honestly knew that kids could read intense moments in history & synthesize the issues to learn how to be a better person. my grandma bought me my first doll, molly, when i was only six & the dolls became a huge part of my childhood. when i turned 21 a couple years ago - we were living in minneapolis - she took me to have lunch for my birthday at the american doll place in the mall of america & bought me the Addy doll for my birthday. it was such a powerful moment i hasn’t expected.

I learned a lot of my core beliefs from these girls.

These are from one of their latest books, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Body Image:

They got a lot of flak from conservative parents for this and they did. not. back. down.

Their newest historical doll, Claudie, is a black girl growing up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her story is about Black artists thriving, and making a safe, beautiful place for themselves in a society that tries to reject them. It teaches about the NAACP’s protests against lynchings, in ways kids can understand, but there’s also so much Black joy and creativity showcased in her story.

Another historical doll, Melody, is growing up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. She faces the struggles and triumphs of attending a newly integrated school, and learns about the bombing of a Black church in Alabama that killed four little girls her age. Her stories show how black people found support and community within the church, as well as music— she loves to sing! If you have a free hour, I highly recommend watching her special on Amazon (free with prime). It stars Caila Marsai Martin from Blackish and it will make you weep.

The girl of the year for 2022, Corinne, is Asian, and her story touches on the issues of anti-Asian hate in the wake of covid. When conservative parents threw a fit about this, American Girl went ahead and made the girl of the year for 2023 Asian, too.

Any of their dolls can be customized with assistive devices like hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. They also have bald dolls, to include stories about girls battling cancer or alopecia. And it’s not just girl dolls— they have boy dolls now, too! And dolls with no gender assigned to them! People complained that they couldn’t find any dolls in the Just Like Me line that looked like them, so they now give people the ability to create their own custom doll, with tons of different options.

While some of the girls have male friends their own age, *none* of the historical AG stories I remember reading have the narratorial tone of “of course she’s going to marry him when she grows up” that was otherwise absolutely ubiquitous to stories with girl-child characters. They portray male-female friendships *as* friends, or the only boys are close relatives or obnoxious jerks – who also don’t get the “he likes you or he wouldn’t bully you” treatment, even.

blinkies! they’re fun, cute, they infected every corner of the internet at one point, and i’m gonna help you bring the art of making them back so they can infect it again!! Please use these powers for good if i see komaeda kinnie blinkies popping up left and right i’m deleting my blog and yours too because i invented the internet and i can do that

i’m going to be using aseprite for this guide- it’s my favorite pixel art tool out there right now that i talked about earlier coincidentally! if you want a copy for yourself, it’ll run you about $15USD. it’s important to use an art tool that lets you edit gifs as frames. if what you’re running won’t allow you to edit or make gifs, you might have to edit each frame individually and then string the still images together on ezgif or something. i’m pretty sure most programs out there will let you edit gifs though!! aseprite is by no means mandatory for blinkie making, just a little redommendation n_n

so, the blinkies you usually see have dimensions of 150 x 20px! the golden ratio for blinkies if i do say so myself. most blinkies have 2-4 frames, sometimes more! feel free to add however many you need for your desired animation n_n but if you’re looking to make a simple blinkie, 2 should be just fine! 

here i edited a blinkie template and added a graphic (on a separate layer- layers are important!) to it- all i did for the next frame was change the colors a bit! easy!

(pink dashes become yellow and vice versa to give the blinkie effect)

you can always start from scratch on an empty 150x20 canvas, but i like to use blank templates (↑ like this one ↑) and edit them to my liking! it saves some time :-) once you have your design finished, add whatever text you want! i sometimes use my own fonts that i just draw out, but other times i’ll just insert some text and adjust it how i want it n_n do whatever you think looks best!

this should be obvious, but make sure you have your text and whatnot pasted into every frame! or at least the frames you want it to be visible in. after that you should be good to save it as a gif and use your blinkie!

definitely carmen jones from 1954! it was the first old film i ever saw with an all black cast, and i remember being so emotional while watching it... giddy and absolutely entranced, it was electrifying.

as i've mentioned in the past, i grew up watching old movies and never saw black women portrayed as anything other than mammies, maids, or lounge singers at best. seeing all these beautiful black people in dazzling technicolor was like a dream come true.

i can honestly say watching this film was a turning point in my life and what inspired me to go full speed ahead into seeking out old black films and it has influenced my art in a very big way!